The current archival status leaves fans in a justifiable sense of dismay, with 97 episodes missing. But there is
also a sense of confusion; many episodes exist in multiple formats: 16mm film, 35mm film, 625 line VT etc. In an ideal
world, most of the black and white episodes should exist on 2 inch 405 and 625 line videotapes (barring the few exceptions
that were broadcast from film), and the ones from 1970 onwards (excepting "Spearhead from Space" which was made on colour film) should be on 625 line colour videotape. But we don't live in an ideal world and as the following table shows we are left with a
confusing rag-bag of episodes in a variety of standards, thanks to the junking policy enacted by the BBC in the 1970s. Its hard
to know what exists and what doesn't.
The purpose
of this page is to list the episodes that exist, whether clips survive, etc. etc. To prevent repetition of data (some
Pertwee stories exist in multiple formats - "The Daemons" parts 1,2,3 and 5 for instance survive as black and white
telerecordings, U-Matic copies of off-air US colour recordings, and versions restored by combining these two sources),
this list only mentions sources as close as possible to the original transmission, or the best quality. A qualifier for
this last statement: "best" does not imply that the recording is "good"; look at the Reverse Standard Converted (RSC) DVD release of "Inferno" as an example - I got a VHS dub of an off-air SVHS recording of this from New Zealand in 1992 and the quality was, and indeed still is superior, but when I mentioned this I was told that this was impossible. Better results have been obtained for this story and "The Claws of Axos" by combining the colour information from the RSC version with the black and white films. Personally I think that too much time and effort was spent on RSC; the results were
disappointing and should not have been used in my opinion, but what do you do when you have to justify the time and money spent in developing the process in the first place? And lest we forget, the Chroma Dot Colour Recovery process has not been the overwhelming
success as has been claimed; in the clamour for colour versions of "The Mind of Evil" et al., critical appraissal of the results
are lacking. When this is applied, we see "flashing faces," mottled skies, and coloured trails which follow actors as they move; these artefacts are severely distracting. It would seem that the motto "Good enough" was applied in the rush to prepare the episodes for DVD release. The arbitrary politics of the Restoration Team sometimes leave one in dismay. The second episode of "The Abominable Snowmen" has a brief section of sound missing and Mark Ayres tried his best to recreate it. Otherwise, the alternative was, as he says, to drop the whole scene. A vital scene where the Yeti were revealed to be robots and the chest cavity was empty. How come something that was acceptable and broadcast in 1967 was not OK some four decades later? On "The Troughton Years" VHS c.1991, this brief section of sound loss was edited out cleverly; only the first few seconds of the Doctor's examination of the Yeti was removed - the zoom-in on the control sphere was slowed down so that the monks chanting covered up the missing soundtrack.
Another point of contention in the definition of "best" is the "restored" episode one of "Invasion of the Dinosaurs"; the blue component of the colour was found to be missing during the colour recovery process and it seems
that the released DVD version reflects the fact that only a small attempt was performed in recreating it. Maybe one day, with more time
and money available, a definitive colour restoration will be achieved.
Thanks to Steve Phillips' clips listing, I have collated surviving material culled from the original episodes. I have
also made a note where a significant amount of off-screen photographs exist. These were normally taken by John Cura,
with the sole exception being "The Daleks Masterplan" episode 7. I haven't listed other photographs, such as the photo
of the Rill from Galaxy Four, or the other pictures of "The Evil of the Daleks" part 5, printed in Doctor Who Magazine
about 1992.
I have also indicated where episodes have been found, but in an edited state; some of the edits are fairly minor,
but some, like the ending of the third episode of "Galaxy Four" which is completely missing, are obviously
more severe but can hopefully be reconstructed, like the "Next Episode" caption of the final episode of "The Celestial Toymaker"
which was recreated for the DVD "Lost In Time" compilation. Some edits may be repairable by using the Australian censor clips,
a technique which was used to bring "The War Machines" to a state closer to its original broadcast version (its hoped
that this can be used to fill in the gaps in the newly found "Underwater Menace" part two).
Episodes that have been found since
1981 are surrounded by a red border. In this latter case, this only denotes episodes for which no complete material
previously existed, and thus does not include the Canadian NTSC videotapes, as these episodes existed already in black
and white.
One other point to note is that audio recordings, of highly variable quality, exist for each episode. All episodes
made after the Jon Pertwee era survive in their original formats, although one was edited ("The Deadly Assassin" part 3)
before a repeat showing, and another ("The Awakening" part 1) is retained by the BBC, but has been damaged.
To view archival details in the "floating window", please ensure you have Javascript enabled in your browser.
Also, By clicking on the icons in the list below you can view whether episodes are available for purchase
either on DVD or as CDs with linking narration. The pop-up windows allow you to see the titles of the
individual episodes (pre-"The Savages") in case you come across them (!), whether the prints are damaged or
incomplete, and also links to photonovels, if available.
Updated: December 16th, 2013: Finally added details of "The Moonbase" DVD.
Updated: February 22nd, 2014: This week, the TV nostalgia group "Kaleidoscope" found
a copy of the 1959 BBC drama "Medico" after a discussion
on its excellent Facebook page. The interesting thing is that documentation shows that this was never recorded by the BBC. Couple this with the find of an edition of
"The Sky At Night" in an African TV station a few years ago (again, we are told this was never sold overseas and/or recorded)
and the find of 10 "Doctor Who" episodes from 1964-1970
in Taiwan (who never bought these episodes at the time), and we must conclude that BBC documentation is not as firm as has been claimed. Certainly, we must question
the unwavering claims from so-called authorities in the Doctor Who arena, some of whom have kept up a vendetta of hatred
against me for 20 years and whose mentality
regarding theories of missing episodes is, "If it sounds unlikely it probably is and therefore I can't be bothered to check."
Updated: September 1st, 2015: The BBC have finally announced that "The Underwater Menace" DVD is to be released on October 26th. Ordering details can be found here.
The murkier side of lost TV hunting was recently demonstrated when a missing episode of the TV series "Softly, Softly" (entitled "Recovery", ironically) was put up for auction on Ebay. The missing TV group Kaleidoscope was outbid and the episode eventually went for £770. Not long
afterwards, the episode was put up for £2000 but, not surprisingly, there were no takers and the price was eventually reduced to £1000. Still no bids and the episode disappeared from view. Then a while later, the original bidder put the episode up for auction,
the man who bought it for £770 giving negative feedback saying that the BBC already had a copy! The episode eventually sold for about £330. Was the "winning bidder" a shill account or had he got a refund from the original vendor? It is hard to tell.
The notion that the BBC had the episode already comes from a comment by Paul Vanezis, a missing TV episode hunter (with whom I have had dealings previously) after the £2000 sale price horrified TV buffs. Apparently, 15 years ago, a TV engineer had bought the film print for £50 ("and it was overpriced then" we were told) but had made a Digibeta copy which he gave to the BBC before selling the print on. The Digibeta copy hadn't been catalogued and thus no one knew about it. By an amazing coincidence, it was only now that this story came out and we were told that after the Ebay fiasco, the BBC was prompted to cataloguing it. I was suspicious, as the timing was odd. Attempts to get any information from the BBC Archive yielded nothing. I was contacted by a few people who thought that the "engineer with the Digibeta" story was a hoax, and was an attempt to try to get the Ebay vendor to reduce his price. If this is true, it is somewhat dishonest, even fraudulent as it was an attempt to get the price down, even though I do agree that £2000 was too much to ask.
I do wonder what will happen if a missing Doctor Who episode were to appear for a huge sum on Ebay: "sorry, it was found years ago, but wasn't entered into the system....since its practically worthless, you might as well hand it over..."
Or as a friend said in 1992, "If the BBC expects someone to hand over these episodes for nothing [after a collector had paid a lot for them] then they really do need their heads examining!" The collectors have this rare material; the BBC don't. And the BBC expect to make a fortune from it. Its clear from the Underwater Menace DVD that the BBC will resist the fan's petitions to release old material, and then when they they finally back down, produce a flimsy, lacklustre DVD in haste just to shut the fans up and make as much money as they can.
September 26th, 2015: Philip Morris announced at a convention today that he had found "The Web Of Fear" part 3 in Nigeria but that he believes it was stolen by the local TV Station manager and sold to a private collector. For this reason, this is why he kept quiet about further episode finds to prevent further finds being stolen.
February 19th, 2016: Dave Hoskins book, "Chasing Shadows", on the hunt for the missing episodes is to be published soon (there are Amazon links at the bottom of this page); I don't know if my interview with him is to be included. It might also be providential to ask people not to email me hints, leads and rumours on the missing episodes; my interest in them is minimal these days. Apart from "The Enemy Of the World" (which my wife bought for me without my knowledge), I haven't seen any of the episodes recovered since "Tomb of the Cybermen" in 1992. I don't want to get involved anymore.
April 15th, 2016: A discussion on the Kaleidoscope Facebook page caught my eye concerning missing radio programmes. In a conversation about some TV and radio broadcasters being "cold" to retrieved shows (recall Adam Lee in 1993 fronting "Missing Believed Wiped" saying anything was of interest, whereas he'd privately said differently), someone said; "What is the point in taking in something and using valuable (stretched) resources if the material isn't needed and they know where it is if they do need it. There is only only so much money to spend, and it is better spent on maintaining what they have properly...perhaps you would like to lobby your MP to see if they can get the Licence Fee quadrupled to pay for the 'we have to keep and take everything' approach."
This deserves some comment. First of all, how can they say if material isn't needed? TV shows junked in the 1970s are now in demand. Secondly, not wanting the material because they know where it is is a flimsy argument. Dick Fiddy told me that he had heard that some collectors had their recordings destroyed when they died - in some cases perhaps because their partners didn't know their wishes. What may be available now may not be in a few years time (I bet if this happened to Dr.Who, fans would be in an uproar!).
On a separate note, the Mausoleum Club forum tells us that "Steve Davis mentioned recently that the BBC has junked a lot of their 80's snooker output and Snooker collector, Roger Lee, has reaffirmed this." Coupled with the junking of children's shows in the 1990s, this could be a cause of worry!
[The story behind the 1993 wiping of children's programmes by Adam Lee is confusing: from various sources, it is said that the project to convert analogue tapes to digital was underfunded, and the children's shows were wiped and the 2 inch tapes were sold to Australia to generate money. The NFA/BFI had already refused to take on the tapes. We nearly lost Rentaghost!]
July 2nd, 2016: In 2015, Martin Loach contacted Kaleidoscope saying that he had recovered 20 hours of material from reel-to-reel tapes, some of which were clips and some were missing programmes (albeit a few were incomplete), including the only edition of "We Want to Sing" to exist. Astonishingly, we are told that "Sadly neither the BFI or BBC were interested [in 2001/2]... BBC and BFI wanted broadcast quality material, 16mm or 2", not off-air reel to reel material which does break up and is not complete in many cases. Then there was the fact it wasn't catalogued so they didn't know what was there. Then they were mis-advised that the tapes were unplayable; and the Till Deaths were considered culturally important, but Redvers Kyle and bits of Holiday 69, not so."
Which, in my opinion, is a thoroughly revolting attitude, especially when these two organisations said at the first Missing Believed Wiped that even clips were of importance. Of course, at the time, the BBC was quietly wiping children's TV shows. So much for "culturally important". Perhaps we should seriously question how determined these organisations are in the preservation of lost TV shows. Of course, if it had been something that could be sold and could make money, I'm sure they'd be interested...
Fortunately, some 14 years later, both the BBC and BFI had changed their minds and were interested...but how much material had people tried to return previously and faced the cold shoulder?
August 20th, 2016: When interesting TV recovery discussions mutate or are diverted into Dr Who discussions, I can imagine the angst and fury amongst enthusiasts that such conversations have essentially been hijacked. Witness the fascinating comments on the Kaleidoscope Facebook group about the recovery of 30 line moving images from audio tape and the recovery of the "Intolerance" episode of "Till Death Us Do Part" ... one again, Dr Who was brought up. At about the same time the EBay hoax of "The Savages" part 1 (or was it 4?) materialised. Of course great interest was generated ... this never happens for other TV shows. So, yes I can believe TV fans being put out when Who fans are so blinkered and short sighted.
October 4th, 2016: The excellent discovery of the missing 1st season Avengers episode "Tunnel of Fear" has, of course, brought out the Who fans asking if episodes of their favourite show has been found, and some saying that installments of DW would be more significant. Cue indignation from certain quarters.
June 24th, 2017: Some random musings. The BBC held off releasing "The Underwater Menace" on DVD, and only acceded under fan pressure. And when they did, it was decidely lacklustre, especially the reconstructions of the missing episodes 1 and 4. One could almost be forgiven for thinking that they wanted to reduce overheads in order to maximise profits. It could be that the cost of animation were prohibitive. But reading the Restoration Team account of the release, it seems (to me anyway) that the BBC wanted to rush it out with minimal effort. If you bear this in mind, would you really want "The Crusades" on DVD too?
The BBC's attitude towards old Who is strange. It is now impossible to find official broadcasts in the UK now that the Horror Channel has its meagre collection pulled (and it seems they had no say in why only the first four stories of the Key To Time season was offered to them). Of course, its not too hard to find New Who episodes on Sky. So why are the BBC so lacklustre when it comes to pre-2005 episodes? Remember the childish midnight reporting embargo when the recovered Web of Fear and Enemy of the World episodes were unveiled? Why treat us like children - they certainly want our money! This brought back halcyon memories of the 1980s and 1990s when BBC Enterprises regarded us fans with the manner of a greedy politician...when 6+ episodes were spread over two VHS tapes to make more money ... when a couple of quid were added to the price of the newly found "Tomb" to maximise the revenue ... when PG rated stories were released over seas, but not here ... the credits on "Web Planet" 6 replaced with nasty video versions (the lie here was that it was because they couldn't get clearance for a bit of music, but the truth is it was to remove the "Next Episode" caption) ... and so on.
Which is all taking the piss.
Mention of the animations above kindle another observation. Why wasn't Web of Fear 3 given an animation treatment? Cost? This seems silly; the BBC were guaranteed to make a fortune from the 2013 releases. Why not do a commentary track? This would be minimal effort. Cost again perhaps? Or a rush to get the episodes out? This last point seems unlikely as the episodes were back in the UK in the summer of 2013 (another case of fans being kept in the dark, like the 2011 episode find which where held back for at least 6 months in order to give the BFI's "Missing Believed Wiped" some much needed publicity). So, why no animation for Web 3? Another possibility remains open: blowing the gaffe. When the trailer for the animated Power of the Daleks was leaked in late 2016, some fans speculated that the brief clips were used to bridge the gaps in hypothetical recovered episodes. As it turned out, this wasn't the case. If a company was tasked to animate Web:3 and clips leaked, it could possibly the alert the world that at least some of it was back. Why the abject secrecy??
On Facebook recently, one of the glitterati in the world of "Famous Fans" published a letter from Philip Hinchcliffe from the mid 1970s in which he admitted that older episodes had been destroyed. And in the reprinted "Making of Doctor Who", it was also admitted that certain stories had gone. Did this not cause a stir at the time?
Some sad news: a Who friend whom I have known for some twenty years had an argument with myself on Facebook. It would seem that he read my "revisited" article (a bit slow as this had been up for 14 years!) and felt indignant that I had shamed Peter Finklestone/Peter Crocker by mentioning his pervert peep-hole camera antics. My ex-friend didn't see the point in mentioning it in a missing episode article, even though the article was a "memoir". I also find it sad that he was more concerned with the damage done to his friend's reputation rather than the people he embarrassed for "his own amusement" (and I think we all know what that means). Just remember when you watch an old, enhanced Dr Who episode that the person who worked on it recorded videos of women and children using his lavatory for his own pleasure. If Dr Who fans had any moral scruples, there would be an outcry. But if they did, they wouldn't get their pristine videos would they? So much for the stories that Finklestone sold the rights
to VidFIRE for £100 when he was outed!
The news of John Davies conviction for possessing paedophilia also exposes the double standards in Dr Who fandom. People are falling over themselves to unfriend Davies on Facebook - but ignoring Crocker's indiscretions. But, as I said above Crocker is far more valuable.
There was an interesting post on Kaleidoscope recently: A collector returned David Bowie's "The Jean Genie" to the BBC, who were so keen to get it they promised the owner's expenses which was "getting on for £400 in train fares, taxis etc." But the BBC didn't pay him, even after an invoice was issued. A Kaleidoscope member told the collector at a conference that the BBC would never pay, in principle (though an ex-BBC employee disputes this). In return, the collector said they would never get anything from his collection - but at the conference was Tony Ageh, the (then) BBC Controller Archive Development. He made sure the collector got his expenses and a fee. BBC Worldwide also offered to pay 15% of sales for "The Jean Genie" but of course nothing ever came of this. A letter to the Director General yielded a reply that the recording was their copyright. As the collector mused, "I agree - but there's no point in owning the copyright if you don't own a copy! In fact, the fact that [they] wiped it may be prima face evidence that [they] no longer had an interest in it." When "The Lion" was found in New Zealand in 1999, the owner paid $200 to have it shipped via courier to the UK. It took 6 months for him to be reimbursed as there was
apparently no budget for missing TV. $200 could have been recouped via VHS sales in no time at all.
If this attitude is endemic within the BBC, or other TV stations, when material is offered for return, its little wonder that other precious recordings have not been unearthed.
I have had a few thoughts about what occurs in the minds of film collectors. There has been a large amount of publicity regarding
lost TV - the various "Missing Believed Wiped" conferences (especially the first one in 1993), the Dr Who "Missing in Action" minifilm, the 1999 UK national lottery shows ("The Lion") and The One Show detailing the Nigerian find in late 2013, not to mention newspaper and web articles and fanzines (eg. the excellent "405 Alive"). Thats a lot of pleas and begging to return missing items. I simply cannot believe that the film collectors missed all these appeals. So why are we still seeing TV shows appearing years later? We could have been watching missing Z-Cars, Softly Softly, Dr Who, the Avengers for decades rather than wait for this stuff to materialise fairly recently.
There could be many reasons. The film collector may not want to return material, and this is a matter of speculation: perhaps they don't like the BBCs policies in the past - perhaps they don't like Auntie's treatment of Jeremy Corbyn (!); perhaps they just don't want to return items? Perhaps they have not been put in a situation where they feel compelled to provide their collections (they haven't been offered enough money perhaps?).
I believe that there is more lost TV out there but film collectors just don't feel compelled to come forward. Part of me
doesn't blame them. The owner of the missing Till Death Us Do Part episode "Sex Before Marriage" had held onto it for well over a decade but refused to let anyone see it; "fortunately", a change of ownership allowed it to fall into public hands again.
Well, well. The peep-hole pervert Finklestone/Crocker has been working on the re-issue of "The Enemy of the World", to come out in March 2018. At this rate, I fully expect "The Two Doctors" to come out with the "Fix with Sontarans" segment reinstated, since the restoration team obviously relish sex fiends.
An interesting comment on the Australian film can that supposedly "once" contained a duplicate of "The Macra Terror" part 3. Dr Who fans have wet themselves over this find, but lets look at this way - not one of these duplicates have ever surfaced. Assuming they existed in the first place, they could very well have been destroyed.
More interesting stuff about missing TV. It seems that about 2003 ago the BBC Archives were allowed to examine two lost episodes of "The Likely Lads". They had originally been kept by a BBC film editor and his wife was keen for the BBC to preserve them - indeed they were even allowed to inspect the films; their son said when she died he would sell the prints to Kaleidoscope. He broke his word and sold them to another collector instead.
A nice tribute to Graham Strong in the latest DWM. Not so nice is the fact that my name was not mentioned as a go-between. Even more not so nice is that Peep-hole Peter was mentioned. Also not so nice is that Crocker promised me excellent copies of vintage Dr Who episodes (which I am still waiting for - I think this was a "bribe" to ensure I'd give him Strong's phone number which I was going to give anyway). But of course, the author of the tribute is a friend of Crocker.
Quite a while ago, DWM published an article alledging that missing episodes could possibly be in Taiwan, and I mentioned this above.
So, where's the proof? Who has seen the episodes recovered from that country? Doubts on the veracity of the story are magnified when
one remembers that the source of this story was one Ian Levine, bullshitter and self-aggrandizer extraordinaire. Since he fell out with
JNT in 1986 and lost first hand access to news scoops, he has been trying to convince us that he is still relevant.
On the One Show on October 5th 2018, Phillip Morris came forward with news that a lost Morecambe and Wise episode had been found in Sierra Leone. This was the tip of the iceberg; there was another M&W, a Basil Brush episode, a Steptoe and Son ("My Old Man's A Tory", but now in much better quality) and an installment of "The Rag Trade". There was much understandable enthusiasm, but some Dr Who fans of course came forth to bemoan why nothing of their favourite show had turned up. Some of the comments were quite aggressive. "Sierra Leone's archive was destroyed 25 years ago so how did this appear ... its five years since the last missing episode announcement ... they could be able to announce something to coincide with the new Jodie Whittaker series ... it's the shows 55th anniversary ..." are some of the reasons why we should apparently expect a plethora of previously lost goodies to be rushing to the shops!
Network sent out an email advertisement on or around December 17th, 2018 advertising that the film version of "The Likely Lads" would be released the next month - and the cover artwork said that two missing episodes of the TV show would be included. When you click on the link, the cover makes no mention of the TV episodes. It had been said by all-round "nice guy" Paul Vanezis that episodes were in "safe hands" and that fans of the series would not be disappointed. Are these the two shows ("Faraway Places" and "A Star is Born") referred to above?
Early January 2019: A fantastic haul of Dr Who audio recordings, named "The Randolph Tapes" after the name that was marked upon the box, have been unearthed. These include cliffhangers and reprises, as well as announcements over the credits, which had been lacking on some copies. These announcements include credits to Terry Nation for some of "Power of the Daleks" and an apology to the Frank Richards Estate for the character of Cyril in "The Celestial Toymaker". These recordings go from "The Nightmare Begins" (second half only) to "The Moonbase" episode 1. These recordings only came to light after the donor was asked to take them away for destruction. Fortunately, he didn't - and this makes us wonder what happened to the rest of the episodes. Unfortunately, this amazing find has demonstrated ructions in the missing TV groups, with some people begging, or demanding that Kaleidoscope not be given the tapes, but to give them straight to the Restoration Team. Some of these comments can be found on the "Missing Believed Wiped" facebook page and paint Kaleidoscope as a cowboy operation.
And then, soon afterwards, was the announcement that Kaleidoscope had been given 65 off-air video tapes from 68-76, including "Top of the Pops", "Lift Off With Ayshea", "Saturday Variety", "It's Cliff Richard" and "45" and no doubt many others. Chris Perry explains,
"Yes the lady [the donor] was terribly sweet, she thought they were film; and then audiotape. She had kept them since 1982 when she bought them at an auction. She took them to the Antiques Roadshow who told her they were worthless and she should throw them away. Fortunately she saw me on BBC Breakfast doing the Kal30 event chat and emailed TV Brain to offer them to us."
And more ructions, for not everyone was jubilant. The joyless and charmless Vanezis, encumbered no doubt by feelings of spite and jealousy (after all, he has borne a grudge for 20 years over a trivial disagreement with Kaleidoscope) downplayed the restoration efforts of Chris Perry and his technicians even though they are obviously a work in progress. Of course, no doubt he thinks he and his vile chums can do better.
The story about the two "Likely Lads" episodes is correct - and another release is "Sex Before Marriage" all of which are to be released by Network. Kaleidoscope claim that "Sex..." was shown at the BFI but was immediately taken away by the owner and it is only now able to be shown again.
More mysteries: two episodes from the first season of "It Ain't Half Hot Mum" are missing. When were they wiped? They were being shown in edited formats in Australia in 1988 and then two years later in Holland. Fortunately the Australian showings were videotaped and these eventually found their way onto the DVD, even though the donor was not credited, or approached for this recordings which were a generation up from the BBC's (the DVD claimed they'd been found in the back of a cupboard in Australia). The BBC had also been tipped off about these episodes but with no response - and there is also the familiar story that the Archives weren't interested in VHS recordings.
Regarding the two "Likely Lads" episodes: they were apparently rescued by a BBC technician who found them in a skip waiting to be destroyed. He kept them in a loft along with about 50 cans of film, which were discovered when he passed away. These include many
shows which were/still are missing including a Sykes ("Wedding"). When news of all this broke in 2007 on the Missing Episodes forum,
the source was roundly dismissed as a hoaxer. Why did it take a decade for these to come to light? We are told, rather vaguely that, "There
was a degree of complacency at the very beginning unfortunately which the person who owned the films took a dislike to." If that meant
the unhelpful attitude of the bigwigs on the missing episodes forum, then this is certainly believable. What a shame. We could have been
enjoying these gems in 2007 - and that includes Rodney Bewes who died in 2017.
Kaleidoscope have funded the transfer of a load of Australian "censor clips" from missing TV shows (we are told there was no money at the BBC or ITV to do it). No Dr Who - that was exhausted in 1996 and a search reveals that nothing else was retrieved at the time. Which begs the obvious question: why weren't these other clips found twenty years ago? Bad indexing is to blame apparently - but I'll bet it was because no-one looked for them. Dr Who had monetary value and a rabid fan base. Who knows what has been destroyed by the archives in the intervening 20 years? Some of the clips date back to the 1960s and apparently they were only supposed to be kept for 30 years. No doubt some will have slipped through the cracks but perhaps a lot of good stuff has gone.
March 13th, 2019: the only missing episode of the BBC North Sea ferry saga (17) of "Triangle" has been found on VHS. One wonders how it
ever got lost. Its almost as if someone picked the original up off the shelf to be degaussed, thinking "Ha ha! Now it definitely can't be repeated!"
In case you didn't know if, the recent Blu-Ray of Till Death's "Sex Before Marriage" has a couple of small cuts. These cuts could have been restored from the Australian censor clips recently recovered by Kaleidoscope - but they were overlooked by Dr Who fixated fans in the 1990s. It was known about as early as March 2017 that clips from "Out of the Unknown" existed as censor edits - but no-one could be bothered to get them.
August 7th, 2020. The recent re-issue of the animated "Power of the Daleks" has a reconstruction of the episodes with complete versions of the end titles; Graham Strong omitted these to save tape space, but the mysterious 'Randolph' did, so we now get audio credits for Terry Nation and Tristram Cary for episodes 1-3. Mark Ayres forget to include credits for Kaleidoscope and Robert Wyn (or Joseph Quendon as he's known on Twitter) for providing the Randolph tapes - in Robert's case, he is the "owner." He was also told that he would get a contributor's copy of the story for helping out. He didn't. His twitter feed says that he feels "shafted." Rather like me and the Graham Strong tapes then.
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